A bear is walking along when he comes upon an outhouse, which he enters. A little later, a rabbit comes upon the same outhouse and enters to relieve himself, nodding to the bear as he enters. After awhile, the bear asks the rabbit if shit ever sticks to his fur. The rabbit replies that no, it doesn’t. So the bear picks him up and wipes with him.

In a homily to about 10,000 people in St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, he firmly rejected suggestions the Church should change to suit public opinion.

“Anyone who lives and proclaims the faith of the Church is on many points out of step with the prevalent way of thinking,” he said. “The approval of the prevailing wisdom, however, is not the criterion to which we submit.”

The significant quote is in the full article:
“Today’s regnant agnosticism has its own dogmas and is extremely intolerant regarding anything that would question it and the criteria it employs,” the pope said. “Therefore the courage to contradict the prevailing mindset is particularly urgent for a bishop today. He must be courageous,”

The Google Maps on Windows Phone debacle looks like it will be resolved after all. Google now says that it is in fact planning to get rid of the redirect that’s preventing Windows Phone users from accessing the Google Maps website using Internet Explorer — “soon,” even.

A Marin activist named Jonathan Frieman, who runs a small nonprofit corporation (the JoMiJo Foundation) was driving in the carpool lane on highway 101 in Marin when he was stopped by a cop and given a $478 ticket. Ah, but Frieman insists he wasn’t driving alone; beside him in the car were the articles of incorporation and other relevant corporate paperwork for his foundation — and in the United States, corporations are considered people. In fact, the California Vehicle Code refers to “natural persons or corporations.”

So Frieman is challening his ticket in traffic court, and is willing to spend his own money to appeal the case as far as he can. He wants to force the courts to decide: If a corporation is a person, then it gets to ride with a driver in the carpool lane, and his ticket has to be dismissed. If it’s not a person, then maybe it can’t make political contributions.In fact, if a corporation isn’t a person, a whole lot of evil stuff might come to an end.

Funny, but he’s going to lose so fast his head will spin. After all, if his reasoning is valid, you could take a birth certificate of another person with you in the car to the same effect.